No one is going to disagree with you in here, but let's stop with the hyperbole. We do more than "throw rocks at people." 1700ish dps is sufficient for the top tier of content and we can do that if the player behind the op isn't terrible and knows how to gear himself. If you are being benched and still pulling 1600-1700 dps then your raid leader is just an ***. One thing that is universally true in this game-- most DPS'ers are terrible, regardless of class. Even in the best of guilds these days you will generally have 1 or 2 good DPS and a few average. In average guilds they're most likely so terrible they are getting carried by their healers. So if an op is good he shouldn't be getting benched because he's an op. But still I won't disagree that we need buffed, especially concealment.

Keep in mind-- they are getting a BT in that situation where you are not and you would be in an op. Plus hopefully sunder, but that helps both classes.

Keep in mind the entire point of the cartel shop is so we spend more money and thus support our game better.

We need more Mordin and Thane type companions in this game. Oh how I loved those two...

I enjoyed that video far more than I should have. Brb makin a twi'lek and starting up some epic jams.

Mild inconvenience to the playerbase or more barriers which would drive away potential new players? I'll take the credit spam.

I doubt we'd have an unplanned maintenance for companion color unification. That's one of those "they can live with it until Tuesday" kind of problems.

I want the simplest of things-- Fleet chat on my ship. I'd hang out there far more if I could read general and trade chat.

PvE Ops perspective here-- Definitely Lethality. Just general quality of life differences like having stuff to do if you get knocked back (remember-- no gap closer and concealment is like all melee) and energy management is a bit smoother. The only thing that really sucks is we're notoriously bad at target switching due to our reliance on our dots and the energy cost being restrictive to constant re-application. For this alone concealment is better for leveling and dailies, but I digress. The only major QoL change I'd ask for with lethality, and concealment too would benefit from this, is much longer TA durations. Nothing annoys me more than getting knocked back right as I'm about to shiv because my TA is about to fall off and I'm suddenly out of range before I get it off. Really screws with the rotation. But other than that Lethality is pretty fun to raid with.

I agree with this. Turning off the AoE abilities, especially the ones with a channel, will yield much more consistently high companion DPS. AoE is good and all when used properly, but you can't expect the companion AI to be able to differentiate proper times for it.

Please tell me what exactly it is that operatives bring to the table other than damage. Sunder? No. Bloodthirst? No. Battle rez? Maybe, but so can every healer who is actually healing. What are these intricate and precise additions?

It would be awesome if they just gave us the bonus baseline. Would make dps rotations a little cleaner.

I'm well aware that 2100 isn't "normal" and I'll give props where it's due-- he is doing a fine job as a lethality op. An exception does not a rule make, however. Op rotations are so damn tight and skill-capped that the vast majority simply can't compete. And even still this guys numbers aren't considered "great" by any stretch--even if he's one of the highest parsing operatives out there. His 1300-1650s would be 1500-1850s if he were a more competitive class.

Sentinel will be easier to do well with. Watchman in particular is a pretty easy spec to play, and not boringly so. Top shadow dps requires you be balance spec'd--which is not an easy spec to play at all. 7 or 8 things you need to keep track of at any given time. Infiltration is far more simple, and imo more enjoyable, but it does less damage. Shadows can also tank if you ever feel inclined to-- and are probably the most fun tank of the three, at least imo. People tend to enjoy the JK story over the JC story. I'm neutral. Both were average to me. Shmex appeal goes to the shadow though. Double-bladed is way cooler than dual wielding. Long story short: I would probably say that if infiltration did more DPS I'd prefer it over a sentinel. I end up playing my Mara over my Assassin because the damage is just much easier to come by (1700 vs like.. 1400 in similar gear). If you want a challenge-- go balance shadow.

Being as how I play so many alts-- I made a dream team. Melee Tank: Scourge Ranged Tank: Kaliyo Ranged DPS: Temple Melee DPS: Akaavi Healer: Doc Really though I liked just about every companion with the exception of Iresso. Dude was just boring as hell. Best companion story-- Doc by far. So many lulz. edit: Should also note that I have not played a Trooper at all, and a Bounty Hunter only to the low 20s.

I don't inherently agree with this. DF/Sab is OP yes--assuming the fight is favorable to a tight rotation. To the point of probably needing nerfed a little (Gunslinger is my main.. I can say this). DF to SS? They can run very similar numbers. The problem, however, is SS is just harder to do it with than DF. DF is probably the second easiest DPS spec in this entire game so the margin of error makes it seem like its better, when its not inherently so. And that seems to be the case with most of the DoT vs DD specs. Watchman is easy and does awesome deeps. Sage-Balance is easy (although I actually tend to do more as TK, but every other sage seems to prefer balanace). Etc etc. The only exception to the rule, I find, is focus vs vigilance Guards. Focus pretty easy to pull good numbers with. Vig, with its dot clipping issues, is not so easy. I would be in favor of loosening up some rotations though to give us a wider variety. I just don't think the numbers are as off as you think.

I've gone through 2 pages of Invinc's logs and his kill logs are generally, at the high end,1600-1650 DPS. With a low range average of 1300ish. So...right where I said?

If you actually read up on Jedi history you'll notice its actually not that uncommon for Jedi to entertain a lot of different styles and perspectives. You say it's weird that Jedi focus on aggression, but Shien form is an aggression form designed by the Jedi. Ataru is also generally pretty aggressive. Vaapad, an advanced "complete" form of Juyo, although not invented in this era yet, was also invented by a Jedi (Windu). Here is form Niman/Jar'kai. Fact of the matter is Jedi use lightsabers and lightsabers are weapons and weapons are meant to hurt things. They aren't total pacifists.

The end goal is "5%" window top to bottom. Currently this is really no where near the case for a lot of classes. On occasion people break 2100, but lets say for simple average sake that top end is 2k. That would put a low end 5% difference at 1900. So that should be our range..roughly. Currently the highest parsing shadow/assassin I've seen barely eeks out over 1900. I've yet to see any parse higher than this on torparse or anywhere else. I have yet to see an operative break 1750. Granted I haven't seen enough operative parses to really say one way or the other. I do however have my own operative in full BH and even still 1600 is pushing it for me for either spec. Sorcs/Juggs/Mercs are all struggling to break 1900 that I've seen. Only ever possible with cleave damage--again from what I've seen personally/seen in available logs. So that leaves us with Maras/PTs/Snipers-- all of which can easily sit in that 1.9k-2k window. However I will say that the TOR raiding community and the WoW raiding community are impossibly different when it comes to demanding perfection. All of the alts in my sig are BH/campaign geared and I have dps'd on all of them and even a 5th or 6th alt of mine will still generally out-perform most people. People just don't care if they are doing optimal DPS so long as they aren't hitting enrage timers. This also makes it impossibly difficult to gather data to analyze. We have torparse, but it's not anywhere near as popular as worldoflogs so its hard to adequately say "this class is under performing" or "that class is over performing". The only thing we can all agree on is operatives are awful.

Game: 8.5 Core gameplay = 10 The core of this game is awesome. I love the class concepts. I love the stories. Gameplay is solid barring the occasional server lag. PvE Class balance = -0.5 The "5%" dps gap is non-existent across the board and some DPS specs are simply clunky and too much difficulty for the very low reward (looking at you operatives and to a lesser extent assassins). End game content = -1.0 I would love to be able to spend a lot of time on just one character, but there just isn't the content for it. Once my weeklies are done my only options are dailies for credits I no longer need. There needs to be more horizontal non-operation content. The HK line was awesome for this. More of this please. We need more carrots. ------ F2P = 7 I'm a subscriber, but I still spent $85 on the shop stuff. It's a decent start. We still need the option to race change, recustomize, and server transfer. There also needs to be more unique gear (and for the love of god some decent consular gear. Noble Commander is awful). Also a side note-- Legacy needs more work. I'm LL50. I'd like a title or something for this. I'd also like a legacy shared material bank. It doesn't even have to be a full featured bank-- just want to be able to share fragments and metals and whatnot.

I just think balance/madness is too hard to play for the return. I'm glad some of you are having success with it though. Shadows are still the coolest class in the game imo-- even if most people are too bad/lazy to figure them out.

...you can do all those things except the faction change bit.

Cheating? How so? And why draw a distinction between factions? How is it different than say a guardian wanting to give his sentinel hilts?

I know this feel. I'm sure it will come eventually, but I would like to add my name to any petition as a friendly reminder to Bioware that this is long overdue.

Dead serious about this-- Powertech or Vanguard. Unarguably the simplest rotation out of any class and they are top tier dps to boot. Plus gear competition is generally in your favor. Dirty Fighting/Lethality Gunslinger/Sniper would be your next best bet. Stay away from assassins and operatives. I'm probably one of the most experienced DPS'ers in this game and can consistently pull 1700 across all of my alts as a baseline average in rakata/BH gear but I'll be damned if those two classes aren't ridiculously overcomplicated for the return.